Tag Archives: Common Core

Parents in Farmville, North Carolina want to know why their children were given a Common Core vocabulary assignment in an English class that promoted the Prophet Muhammad and the Islamic faith.

“It really caught me off guard,” a Farmville Central High School student who was in the class told me. “If we are not allowed to talk about any other religions in school – how is this appropriate?”

The Islamic vocabulary worksheet was assigned to seniors.

“I was reading it and it caught me off guard,” the student told me. “I just looked at it and knew something was not right – so I emailed the pages to my mom.”

“In the following exercises, you will have the opportunity to expand your vocabulary by reading about Muhammad and the Islamic word,” the worksheet read.

The lesson used words like astute, conducive, erratic, mosque, pastoral, and zenith in sentences about the Islamic faith.

“The zenith of any Muslim’s life is a trip to Mecca,” one sentence read. For “erratic,” the lesson included this statement: “The responses to Muhammad’s teachings were at first erratic. Some people responded favorably, while other resisted his claim that ‘there is no God but Allah and Muhammad his Prophet.”

Another section required students to complete a sentence:

“There are such vast numbers of people who are anxious to spread the Muslim faith that it would be impossible to give a(n)___ amount.”

I spoke to one parent who asked not to be identified. She was extremely troubled by what her child was exposed to in the classroom.

“What if right after Pearl Harbor our educational system was talking about how great the Japanese emperor was?” the parent asked. “What if during the Cold War our educational system was telling students how wonderful Russia was?”

The parent said the material was classwork disguised as Islamic propaganda.

“It’s very shocking,” she said. “I just told my daughter to read it as if it’s fiction. It’s no different than another of fictional book you’ve read.”

A spokesman for Pitt County Schools defended the lesson – noting that it came from a state-adopted supplemental workbook and met the “Common Core standards for English Language Arts.”

“The course is designed to accompany the world literature text, which emphasizes culture in literature,” the statement read.

The problem is it’s emphasizing a specific culture and religion – and the school district acknowledged there were concerns “related to the religious nature of sentences providing vocabulary words in context.”

“Our school system understands all concerns related to proselytizing, and there is no place for it in our instruction,” the statement goes on to say. “However, this particular lesson was one of many the students in this class have had and will have that expose them to the various religions and how they shape cultures throughout the world.”

I asked the school district to provide me with a copy of vocabulary worksheets that promoted the Jewish, Hindu and Christian faiths.

The school district did not reply.

I also asked for the past or future dates when the students would be given those vocabulary worksheets.

The school district has yet to reply.

The student I spoke with told me they have not had any other assignments dealing with religion – other than the one about Islam.

Why is that not surprising?

Based on its official statement, Pitt County Schools seems confident that the vocabulary lessons are in compliance with three Common Core standards related to literary. If you want to look up those standards, reference CCSSELA-Literary L11-12.4.A, 12.4.D and 12.6.

Since the Common Core folks seem to be infatuated with sentence completion – let me try one out on them.

Use “Islamic” and “proselytizing” in the following sentence: Somebody got their ____ hand caught in the ____ cookie jar.

If you or someone you know has a child in the public school system who is experiencing this form of forced dawah, please contact me (pamelageller@gmail.com). We will help you fight this indoctrination.

A concerned Williamson County [Tenn.] parent stumbled upon this, “On October 24 and 25, hundreds of schools, leadership teams, and teachers from across the region will gather in Dubai, to learn about the Common Core State Standards, share curricula and best practices, and network with each other.”

“If Common Core is local and state-led why are they holding Common Core conferences in the Middle East including more than 20 other nations? If Williamson Strong is local and parent-led why is their logo included among the international organizations sponsoring this event?” asks Julie West. And, what is MENA? Middle East North Africa Common Core. Yep. Great article here explains it all!

Williamson Strong’s LOGO looks strangely and exactly like the Global Progressive Propaganda Group K.D.S.L.’s LOGO! Link here. Pearson’s (TN Textbooks) LOGO also appears as a sponsor to this Dubai Common Core Conference.

The big secret = Common Core is the indoctrination of Global Marxism!!!!

Redstate did some digging and found out the true origin of Common Core:

“Back in 2002 the US Department of Education, with help from Bill Gates (Microsoft Corp), Steve Jobs (Apple), AOL Time Warner, Dell Computer, Cable in the Classrooms, Cisco Systems and the National Education set up an organization called: Partnership for 21st Century Skills or P21.org for short. I originally found p21.org from a link on the TeachUNICEF website… Yep, UNICEF is still part of the United Nations. The link was titled: Have you seen the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ new report on Global Education? Among other things I found on the site were articles titled “A Framework For State Action on Global Education and P21 has embarked on a year long project to redefine and reimagine 21st century citizenship.

So we have what appears to be a Non Government Organization, set up by some huge corporations and the US Department of Education to promote something that sounds a whole lot like Common Core on a Global Scale.

Common Core was NOT created by “the Governors” as the Liberals repeatedly lie. It was not a “state-led” initiative.It began with the United Nations, (who now control all of America’s national monuments, facts here.)

…

Now, how does all of this information affect Williamson County citizens? Well, there is an ongoing local war surrounding this Common Core “thing” where Progressives like Superintendent Looney, Huffman, Haslam, and a new SEIU organization called “Williamson Strong” are attacking and intimidating Christians and Conservatives, most recently at the Centennial High School “Let’s Talk Schools” event, where newly elected District 12 School Board Member, anti-Common Core, Susan Curlee was placed in a room alone with school attorney Jason Golden. Superintendent Looney, for the first time ever separated school board members into separate rooms and told parents/citizens to go room to room, with 15 minutes allotted to ask questions to each board member individually. Strangely, a group of Williamson Strong Progressives stopped and stayed in one room for over an hour, the Curlee/Golden room.

Do read it all and ask yourself, why are U.S. educators, textbook publishers and other Common Core profiteers meeting in the Islamic country of Dubai?Could this explain in part why the growing trend of Islamic bias and propaganda in U.S. textbooks?

See Creeping’s Education category to read previous posts on how Islamic indoctrination is creeping into your child’s education.

In my book Stop the Islamization of America, I describe and warn of the islamization of the curriculum and the school room. The book was a primer on how to fight the encroaching Islamic supremacism and sharia. The past few days, I have published news stories here and here of parent protest to Islamic dawah in the classroom.

I have been fielding calls from distraught parents all week — two moms today — reeling from the proselytizing for Islam in their children’s “Social Studies” or “World History” classes. They are not teaching the children “world history,” which would include the 1,400 year history of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements, not to mention the extermination of the entire Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe of Arabia.

Instead, children are forced to recite the shahada (it’s what one says in order to convert to Islam). Instead, they are forced to learn the five pillars of Islam.

Department of Education, Pearson, the Gates Foundation, publishing companies and the testing companies have been hijacked by Islamic supremacists and have hijacked our public school curriculums and textbooks (i.e., Common Core).

Jesus was mentioned once as a Jewish prophet in the first chapter and the second chapter briefly discussed the division within the Christian Church. Chapter three is dedicated completely to Islam and the story of Muhammad, with multiple quotes from the Qur’an throughout the chapter. The book even goes on to say that “. . .Muhammad revealed the purest version of God’s truth” and that Muhammad is the final prophet of God’s truth with the most complete version of that truth.

This is a violation of the establishment clause, and maybe a mass class action suit should be filed. This is something we are looking at.

One mom whom I spoke to earlier told me that her 12-year-old son came home from school yesterday “depressed” and “sick.” Coming from a “good Christian home,” he was confused and “hurt” that he had to write and say the Muslim declaration of faith (the shahada) and write it repeatedly. The mother was beside herself.

When Muslims force Christians to convert, they are forced to say the shahada (the Muslim declaration of faith). The Arabic writing on the black flag of jihad (also known as the al Qaeda flag or ISIS flag) is the shahada. This chant of supremacism and imperialism is being forced on American school kids.

Another mom told me that one of her son’s friends who was raised as a atheist said after these lessons that she began to think differently. So now the schools are converting children to Islam.

One parent on Facebook wrote, “Parents be concerned and check your child’s assignments. My son came to me last night to get help with his Social Sciences assignment about the one God (Allah) and the Five Pillars of Islam. As you can imagine, we were completely shocked. Now to clarify, I have no problem with my child learning about the various cultures around the world and the religions they practice, but for a school to emphasize and actually teach a single religion to children while discouraging the others is beyond deplorable. If you are worried that your child may be forced to endure these teaching please see the ACLU website. By law children are allowed to be excused from any lessons or discussions they object to on religious grounds without consequence. We will be opting out of this one.

The ACLU ain’t going to help you, lady. They are part of the problem.

EXCLUSIVE: Here is what happened to one family. The mother writes:

I want to share my story with you and I hope that I can be a shining light of hope.

About a month ago my daughter asked for my help with her homework. She is in 7th grade and usually does not ask me for help. She gave me her vocabulary words for Social Studies and simply asked me to type it for her. I started typing the first few words, and then I came to Qur’an, Mosque, Alms, Caliph, Jihad, Sunnis, Shiites. I instantly became alarmed and asked to see her Social Studies book. My husband and I spent the next 3 hours reading through her book and I have to tell you that my life changed on that day.

I kept my daughter home from school for the next two days and met with the principal. I attended my daughter’s class when she went back to school. Her assignments continued; draw detailed pictures of the 5 pillars of Islam and write a word collage of all that is good with Islam. We met with the teacher and principal together and questioned the curriculum.

We received the party line responses of “state standards” and “Common Core” for every question we had. I was concerned with the nature of the material that was being taught in the classroom, and whether it was being presented in a truthful manner and that all aspects were told. This was not happening. Simply from viewing the Table of Contents one can see that Islam is the dominant religious focus throughout the book. I was amazed upon further review of the book how they were able to slip Muslims into China, and how Spain is only referred to as Muslim Spain. The chapter on West African Civilization contains The Growth of Islam in West Africa. The teacher explained to me that they had discussed Christianity in the first two chapters, but when I reviewed them personally, I found that Jesus was mentioned once as a Jewish prophet in the first chapter and the second chapter briefly discussed the division within the Christian Church. Chapter three is dedicated completely to Islam and the story of Muhammad, with multiple quotes from the Qur’an throughout the chapter. The book even goes on to say that “. . .Muhammad revealed the purest version of God’s truth” and that Muhammad is the final prophet of God’s truth with the most complete version of that truth.

As I mentioned my life changed that day. That was October 6, 2014. I began writing letters to the ACLU, all of my state and US legislators, journalists, anyone who would listen to me. I contacted our school board and I started daily postings on Facebook about what was happening. Through Facebook I connected with a local parent who in turn connected me to a Trustee on our School Board. I met with that Trustee last night. He is appointing me to ourMaterial Review Committee for our school district which oversees 50,000 students. He is also putting the book in question, Prentice Hall’s Medieval and Early Modern Times published by Pearson Publishing, on the agenda to be reviewed.

The Constitution uses 16 words—known as the “religion clauses”—to create rules about how faith and government interact. One clause gives citizens the right to freely exercise religious convictions; the other prohibits government (including taxpayer-funded public schools) from establishing religion, meaning granting favorable treatment.

I believe that the book in my daughter’s classroom is in direct violation to this clause as described above, and thus violates our First Amendment rights. This is the argument that I have presented to the ACLU, however, I have not had a response from them to date.

The book in question was adopted to our district in 2007, they only keep books for about 7 years so the timing will be perfect to have it removed. I am now on the Material Review Committee and will have a direct influence on the next book that is chosen to replace it.

Beyond having this book removed from my children’s school district I hope to have this book removed from the California Department of Education’s list of approved materials. I will then seek to remove any other books of this bias nature from our school system in California and across the nation. By bias I specifically mean that this book provides favorable treatment to the Islamic faith and does not provide the same treatment to Christianity or Judaism.

Over the last few weeks I have learned that this is a national issue of indoctrination of our children and I want to be able to shed light on this issue nationally and locally. We need to;

Become aware and change the narrative in our schools

Become involved in our children’s education and understand exactly what is being taught to them and why.

Question curriculum when we feel that it is not presented in an unbiased manner.

I am just one parent in one school district in America, but if we each begin to stand up in our communities and take action to be the agents of change we will be able to make a collective difference in our country.

I am in the process of developing a web page atwww.parentsunitedforamerica.com and I have created a Facebook page under Parents United For America. I am hoping that we can connect and work towards the change we wish to see. Please join me and together we will be the shining hope of light that America needs to restore our values and our beliefs in our education system.

This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition. The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of the State of Qatar, whose government you and your philanthropies are connected to and work with. Qatar is a state sponsor of terror, providing funds to Fatah and Hamas, and the host country of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The crisis with Israel is a direct result of Qatar’s/the Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship with the Obama administration, and, in general, Washington D.C. Just yesterday, it was reported that asenior Obama official called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chickenshit.”In August, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to force Israel to accept Qatari-negotiated “peace” terms with Hamas. What loaded dice.

You and Bloomberg Philanthropies have donated millions to Qatar-connected education and financial endeavors. These include Common Core, Connect All Schools, banking interests in Qatar and other Islamic countries that actively finance global terror, think tanks and social referendums having to do with anti-smoking, as well as global warming initiatives that adhere to Qatar’s own stated development goals.

The 3rd annual Bloomberg Doha Conference, to be held this year, will expressly go into the ties between the Bloomberg empire of press and financial companies and Qatar.The conference will cover topics such as: setting the agenda; the global perspective; regional landscape; transition of power; the new Qatari leadership; a conversation with Sir Michael Hintze; Islamic finance; real estate; Saudi energy markets and geopolitics; Iran, Syria and regional political stability; asset allocation; where are the opportunities in the region; traditional versus alternative, wealth preservation for the new generation; World Cup spending and development; regulation and the role this plays for managers looking at the region; investment destinations outside the Middle East and following the money.

All of this indicates a strong, intrinsic financial and strategic relationship between Bloomberg LP and Qatar. All this can be used as leverage against Qatar, which is right now threatening Israel vis-à-vis Washington D.C., Hamas, and Fatah.

In light of these connections that entwine the Bloomberg enterprises with the terrorist state of Qatar, we urge you to read the information below. Qatar is involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking through a relationship with the Pakistani National Logistics Cell and profits from operating a virtual slave state.

So the public has a fuller context of Qatar’s role in supporting and financing terrorist activities worldwide, and their connection to Bloomberg:

Bloomberg has partnered with Qatar on Common Core and the Connect All Schools Project. This project is bringing Arabic as a primary language into New York’s schools. Teaching the Arabic language is based on the grammar in the Quran. Therefore, by default, Islamic education is being forced on grade school children in the United States. Over 100 schools across the country are now implementing this curriculum, which is financed and promoted by Qatar.

The Ground Zero Mosque – now Park51 – was promoted by you (as mayor) and Qatar as well as individuals with radical Islamist ties and terrorism links. Out of a sense of political correctness and the desire to not offend Muslims, this mosque was proposed 600 feet from where the Twin Towers stood on 9/11/2001. As mayor, you banned clergy and first responders from 9/11 ceremonies. The names of those lost that fateful day were also requested by you not to be read, so it would not upset the Islamic community.

During your tenure as Mayor of New York City, Sharia law has been implemented in various forms throughout the city: such as, allowing exceptions for prayer times regardless of job affiliation.The Call to Prayer rings out in Manhattan these days as well and the number of mosques in NYC has exploded over the last few years. Many of these mosques receive funds from Qatar.

Bloomberg and the Qatar Central Bank launched an Interbank Rate in 2012. Qatar Central Bank (QCB) and Bloomberg LP partnered to launch the first ever Qatar Interbank Offer Rate (QIBOR) fixings in a move aimed at encouraging a more active interbank market in Qatar. Interbank rate fixings are used around the world to provide a daily reference point for banks borrowing unsecured funds from other banks in the local wholesale banking market and this announcement brought Qatar into that market for the first time.

Bloomberg LP has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal announced plans to partner with the Bloomberg news service to establish a new Arabic language news channel. Prince Talal’s donations to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), both part of the US Muslim Brotherhood, as well as his support of the Georgetown University Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CCMU), run by long-time Muslim Brotherhood supporter Dr. John Esposito, are well documented. In 2008, an Arab business publication reported that Prince Talal had also made numerous financial contributions to a pan-Islamic interfaith dialog organization that is closely tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood and which has an anti-Semitic statement posted on its website. In March of 2008, the Kingdom Foundation established by Prince Talal was one of the sponsors of a conference held by the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists (WCMP), a new international Islamic philanthropic organization with strong Muslim Brotherhood representation. To be clear, to partner with Talal is to partner with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The banning of smoking indoors fits Islamic Sharia law, as the use of tobacco is haram (i.e., forbidden). For instance, the Nigerian Islamist group – Boko Haram, established by a Qatari proxy who now resides in Doha – recently executed two people for smoking. A Bloomberg anti-tobacco initiative partnered with the Turkish AKP, an Islamist party hostile to Israel and secular Turks, to seriously curtail smoking in that country, just as you did in New York City.

The QAC Coalition and petitioners ask that you consider the attached sourced report on Qatar’s activities. The links cited are vetted and credible sources. We hope you take the time to verify the truth of the statements for yourself.

After doing so, the Coalition of the Qatar Awareness Campaign calls on you to exert due influence on the Qatar for the security of Israel in these extremely perilous times!

** Select signatures as of 9/27. The Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition is comprised of more than 25 journalists, national security experts, publishers, and independent researchers. To view all Coalition participants, please visit the Campaign’swebsite.

Michael Bloomberg, in addition to having been Mayor of New York City and currently being a wealthy elitist Leftist, has ongoing ties to the Islamic world and Qatar. In fact, many of his regulatory moves and his philanthropy efforts are connected to one degree or another with Qatar and Islamic nations, causes and endeavors. Qatar, the reader should be reminded, is the host country of the Muslim Brotherhood and is the primary supporter of the Arab Spring, including the genocidal Islamic State.

Common Core is a huge, Progressive educational implementation in New York City which benefits Microsoft and a host of other businesses. Bloomberg is a major supporter of Common Core and strongly believes in it. So, incidentally (or not), does Qatar. One of Bloomberg’s projects is the Fund for Public Schools, whose primary building block is Common Core. In 2013, Bloomberg Philanthropies donated$1,000,000 or more to this endeavor. George Soros and The Open Society Foundations also donated $1,000,000 or more. Qatar Foundation International, LLC donated somewhere between $100,000 and $499,999. The Qatar Foundation donates to educational causes that directly benefit Islam and Qatar. The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a semi-private chartered, non-profit organization, founded in 1995 by Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Father Emir (the current Emir is His Highness Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani), and his second wife Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. In addition to private funding, it is government-supported and partly government-funded.

The links between Bloomberg and the Qatar Foundation go even deeper. Vartan Gregorian and Michael Bloomberg attended the TIME Summit On Higher Education at the Time Warner Center on September 20, 2013 in New York City. This is significant on multiple fronts. Common Core is linked toConnect All Schools. The Department of State has partnered with the Connect All Schools program which is linked to Vartan Gregorian. He in turn, is connected in a myriad of ways to Barack Obama, not the least of which is that he is a member of the White House Fellowship Commission. Gregorian hails from Tabriz, Iran and is currently the President of Carnegie Corporation. More interestingly for Bloomberg is that Gregorian sits on the board of the Qatar Foundation International (QFI).

The Qatar Foundation International, or QFI, in 2011 partnered with the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate matchmaking between classrooms in the U.S. and international schools through something called the “Connect All Schools” project.

QFI, funded by the Qatari government, explains on its website the initiative was founded in response to Obama’s call in his June 2009 speech to the Arab world in Cairo, Egypt, to “create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo.”

The stated goal of the initiative is to “connect every school in the U.S. with the world by 2016.”…

WND reported last May the Qatar-based foundation awarded “Curriculum Grants” to seven U.S. schools and language organizations to “develop comprehensive and innovative curricula and teaching materials to be used in any Arabic language classroom.”

QFI, based in Washington, D.C., is the U.S. branch of the Qatar Foundation, founded in 1995 by Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Thani is still the group’s vice-chairman, while one of his three wives, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairs the organization’s board.

“This is important because in the near future, Arabic is going to be a global language,” Mamdouh added.

“These kids are like sponges the way they learn the pronunciation and the words.”

[* Emphasis added.]

It should be noted that Arabic grammar is based on the Quran and its verses. When studying Arabic grammar, there is no substitute for studying the Quran. Expecting that the Quran would not be a part of Arabic lessons, is akin to saying that the time-tested grade school “Speller” could be omitted when teaching English.

Bloomberg actively brought Qatar into New York’s classrooms and is forcing Arabic as a language on students via Common Core and the Qatar Foundation International.

On Florida’s Atlantic Coast, some 200 or more local parents and activists have announced plans to show up at Tuesday’s Volusia County school board meeting to protest the public school use of a world history textbook that devotes a whole chapter to Islam but exactly zero chapters to any other religions.

The textbook, called simply “World History,” contains a 32-page chapter fondly devoted to “Muslim Civilizations.” Sections include descriptions of the Koran, the growth of the Muslim empire and the Five Pillars of Islam.

The planned protest will include a demand that students rip out the 32 pages of the Islam chapter unless the school district agrees to provide students with a similar amount of officially-sanctioned material concerning other religions, reports local ABC affiliate WFTV.

The seeds for the Wednesday protest were reportedly planted after an unidentified local mother started a Facebook page demanding that local, taxpayer-funded schools stop using the textbook.

The district indicated that it will continue to use the controversial book.

******

As a school district spokeswoman noted, one reason school districts select this book is because it covers information required under Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards—the state’s version of the Common Core.

This is a dangerous companion program to Common Core and CSCOPE designed to indoctrinate your children and grandchildren about Islam. As part of a National Endowment for the Humanities program funded by $150 million of our taxpayer dollars, 25 books and a DVD are being provided to 800 public libraries. No books are included on Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

Islam is a totalitarian, misogynistic, supremacist doctrine that teaches Muslims to deceive and kill non-believers. There is NO feature of this hate ideology that teaches brotherly love, compassion, tolerance or service to mankind. The goal of Islam is complete submission with three options for non-Muslims: conversion, dhimmitude or death.

Circulate the information about this dangerous, subversive program throughout your communities and organizations.

We MUST stop the stealth jihad to subvert Western laws and values and eliminate ALL human rights.

Having just returned from a two-day workshop on our new “Let’s Talk About It:Muslim Journeys theme, Literary Reflections,” I’m enthusiastic about getting the word out, as well as introducing you to the five books in the series. Dr. Nancy Ciccone, chair of the English Department at the University of Colorado, Denver, and I are working together for the third time on a “Let’s Talk about It” series.

Nancy and I didn’t have to travel far, this time – just to the Grand Hyatt in downtown Denver – to hear project scholars develop the content, andcoordinators from the American Library Association recommend effective ways to implement the project. We joined more than 75 representatives from other libraries around the country who received this “Let’s Talk About It” grant, many of whom were accompanied by their local scholars.

The series here at the Gilpin County Library will be offered beginning January 11, 2014, with the first book, “The Arabian Nights,” as the topic of discussion. This book is also known as “The Thousand and One Nights,” and was compiled during the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258), “regarded as one of the glorious periods of Muslim civilization because of its significant contributions to scientific knowledge, cultural arts, engineering and architecture, and general intellectual innovation.”

…

The fourth session in the “Let’s Talk About It” series, to be presented on Feb. 22, is “Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood,” written by Fatima Mernissi. This is a coming-of-age memoir “depicting traditional life in a harem in Fez (Morocco)…which explores the social boundaries that become fault lines in the debates over the borders between childhood and adulthood, public and private, and male and female.”

Janet Levy, MBA, MSW, is an activist, world traveler, and freelance journalist who has contributed to American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Full Disclosure Network, FrontPage Magazine, Family Security Matters and other publications. She blogs at www.womenagainstshariah.com

Texas is a right-minded red state, where patriotism is still a virtue and political correctness is out of vogue. So how on earth have left-wing educators in public classrooms been allowed to instruct Lone Star students to dress in Islamic garb, call the 9/11 jihadists “freedom fighters” and treat the Boston Tea Party participants as “terrorists”?

Here’s the dirty little secret: Despite the best efforts of vigilant parents, teachers and administrators committed to academic excellence, progressive activists reign supreme in government schools.

That’s because curriculum is king. The liberal monopoly on the modern textbook/curricular market remains unchallenged after a half-century. He who controls the textbooks, teaching guides and tests controls the academic agenda.

That is how the propagandistic outfitting of students in Islamic garb came to pass in the unlikely setting of the conservative Lumberton, Texas, school district. As Fox News reporter Todd Starnes noted this week, a 32-year veteran of the high school led a world geography lesson on Islam in which hijab-wrapped students were banned from using the words “suicide bomber” and “terrorist” to describe Muslim mass murderers in favor of the term “freedom fighter.”

Madelyn LeBlanc, one of the students in the class, “told Fox News that it was clear her teacher was very uncomfortable lecturing the students. ‘I do have a lot of sympathy for her. … At the very beginning, she said she didn’t want to teach it, but it was in the curriculum.'”

But the headline-grabbing injection of moral equivalence into social studies and American history is just the tip of the education iceberg.

Top-down federalized “Common Core” standards are now sweeping the country. It’s important to remember that while teachers-union control freaks are on board with the Common Core regime, untold numbers of rank-and-file educators are just as angered and frustrated as parents about the Big Ed power grab. The program was concocted not at the grassroots level, but by a bipartisan cabal of nonprofits (led by lobbyists for the liberal Bill Gates Foundation), statist business groups and hoodwinked Republican governors. As I’ve reported previously, this scheme, enabled by the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” funding mechanism, usurps local autonomy in favor of lesson content and pedagogical methods.

One teacher described a thought-control training seminar in her school district titled “Making the Common Core Come Alive.” A worksheet labeled “COMMON CORE MIND SHIFTS” included the following rhetorical muck:

–The goal of curriculum should not be the coverage of content, but rather the discovery of content. … If done well, Common Core will elevate our teaching to new heights, and emphasize the construction of meaning, while deepening our understanding of our students.”

–“In our classrooms, it is the students’ voices, not the teachers’, that are heard.”

Blah, blah, blah. In practice, Common Core evades transparency by peddling shoddy curricular material authored by anonymous committees. It promotes faddish experiments masquerading as “world-class” math and reading goals. Instead of raising expectations, Common Core is a Trojan horse for lowering them. California, for example, is now citing Common Core as a rationale for abandoning algebra classes for 8th graders. Common Core’s “constructivist” approach to reading is now the rationale for abandoning classic literature for “informational texts.”
Read more: Family Security Matters

CSCOPE, the controversial online curriculum that taught “Allah is God” and currently is used in 80 percent of Texas school districts, has caught the attention of the Obama administration’s Department of Education.

A source in the Texas education system has told WND that Common Core operatives in the U.S. Department of Education are actively pursuing CSCOPE as a way around the Texas legislative process.

Texas is one of the few states still resisting implementation of Common Core, Obama’s national standards initiative, which many feel is a transparent attempt to nationalize education and progressively control classroom content with minimal parental oversight.

Implementation of Common Core is known to have been made a condition of school systems’ receipt of federal dollars under Obama’s “Race to the Top” program.

WND has documented a strong link between Ayers and CSCOPE heavyweight and Common Core advocate Linda Darling-Hammond. An unrepentant terror group member (and known Obama supporter, financier, and ghost-writer), William “Bill” Ayers was part of the notorious Weather Underground which attempted to bomb the Pentagon in the seventies. After 9/11, Ayers was interviewed by the New York Times, and was quoted as saying he had “no regrets.”

Ayers gave Darling-Hammond an enthusiastic endorsement for education secretary when Obama was first elected. Ayers has worked extensively with Darling-Hammond on many of the same projects, even editing her work. Both are part of what some education experts have termed the “small schools movement,” which allegedly emphasizes “emotional” responses and output over factual mastery.

Darling-Hammond is mentioned throughout CSCOPE literature, has given innumerable lectures on behalf of CSCOPE, and was part of Obama’s educational transition team. She is a primary advocate and proponent of Common Core in Texas, and observers see the acquisition of CSCOPE by the U.S. Department of Education as a logical next step.

This scenario has alarmed those concerned about classroom content accountability. Previously, WND reported how CSCOPE lessons promote Islam, teaching conversion methods and presenting verses from the Quran that denigrate other faiths. In CSCOPE curriculum, the Boston Tea Party is likened to an act of terrorism on par with 9/11. In the wake of the Newtown massacre, the Second Amendment is portrayed as a “collective,” not an individual right, despite the Supreme Court’s recent rulings to the contrary.

The CSCOPE website has posted a response to concerns about certain lesson plans, including an extensive discussion of the Boston Tea Party. But critics say that such lessons should never have appeared in the first place.

Sources within the Texas education system recently informed WND that Wicca, thought by many to be akin to witchcraft, was being taught in CSCOPE curriculum alongside Christianity, but was removed before the news media could access it, a fact which represents one of the biggest concerns for followers of CSCOPE.

CSCOPE apparently immediately deletes controversial content once leaked, making it impossible at any one time to know exactly what students are learning and in what order. Defenders of this process say that this responsiveness to public scrutiny is a form of self-auditing. Others have said that it simply leaves parents, teachers and those in charge of curriculum oversight powerless to stop agenda-driven lesson plans and the damage the ideas therein might do to students.

WND has documented numerous instances of lessons being deleted after their use in classrooms.

When it was discovered that Islam was being given preferential status as a part of a study on the world’s major religions, CSCOPE administrators deleted the lesson plan and associated PowerPoint in the presence of two sources, leaving no trace online.

However, through available technology, documentation of this lesson plan and other such controversial content has been retained and reviewed by Texas educators and WND.

In CSCOPE World History/Social Studies, Lesson 2, Unit 3 under the heading, “Classical Rome,” students are told that Christianity is a “cult,” and given a link to a BBC article saying the early Christians were “cannibals,” i.e. the Eucharist, which students are then led to conclude is the reason for Roman persecution.